P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

It didn’t move. It was locked. He thought for a moment, and then he remembered he had locked it before going out the back door.

He moved sideways off the porch, still watching the lane and the surrounding cabins. The shepherds were both staring at something in the direction of the office. Cam reached the corner of the building and looked around it into the darkness. He studied the snow, but there were no indentations. He stepped around the corner and, keeping his back to the wall of the cabin, slid sideways along the rough boards until he reached the back corner. Then he realized he didn’t have the dogs with him. He called them as quietly as he could, but they didn’t come. He swore and edged his way back to the front of the cabin, feeling very exposed in the weird twilight created by the falling snow. He peered around the corner.

The dogs were gone.

He looked around and thought he saw their tracks headed up the lane toward the cabin office. The wind groaned again, and the snow wheeled in response. Something else cracked out in the woods. Get inside, a little voice in his mind told him. Get inside now.

He did. Not trying to be quiet anymore, he crunched through the snow to the back deck and let himself into the cabin. The sudden warmth from the woodstove was very welcome. He closed the back door and then went to the front windows to see if the dogs were visible, but they weren’t. He flipped on the porch light, unlocked and opened the door, and called them. No dogs. He closed the door. If they’d gone after a deer, they could be in real trouble, because a deer could run them to death in these hills. If they’d gone after a goddamned mountain lion, they could be in real trouble, period. The wind outside was blowing steadily, rattling the damper in the woodstove’s chimney. He threw another log into the firebox and stirred the coals. He knew there was no point in going out there on foot to look for the shepherds. He could easily get himself lost in all this snow, and he was neither dressed nor equipped for that kind of adventure. Then something banged against the back door and he heard the skittering of anxious claws. He unlocked the door and let them in. They ran around the cabin excitedly, panting hard, as if they’d just had great fun with a good chase. He was tempted to yell at them, but then he realized he was very grateful that they were back.

He checked that all the doors were locked and then got ready for bed. Tomorrow, he’d get a trace on that cell number and see if he could track down the mysterious caller. The wind outside blew harder and sleet rattled against the roof. He turned off all the lights, took another look out all the windows, set the Colt on the nightstand, and climbed into the heavily quilted bed. The dogs dropped down near the woodstove and curled up. As he drifted off to sleep, he thought he heard a distant prolonged shriek above the wind coming down from the ravines, but he assured himself that it was just the snowstorm. Of course it was.

Mary Ellen Goode was still smiling when Cam walked into the ranger station the next morning. The day had dawned bright and clear with about a foot and a half of snow on the ground and the temperature at a sinus-clearing ten degrees. The county roads had been scraped and sanded, so he’d made decent time getting over to the ranger station. He’d put on his old deputy’s hat and mirrored sunglasses against all the glare, and Mary Ellen told him with a perfectly straight face that no one would ever make him for a cop.

She offered coffee, which he accepted gratefully. He explained the note and the phone number, and her eyebrows went up.

“That’s the number for my Park Service cell phone,” she said. “But it’s right over-” She started looking around her desk. “Well, it was right here. This is the charger for it.”

“Whoever left the note knew who owned the phone, then,” he said. He wondered if it was someone in this office. He explained about the initials on the note.

“I don’t like the sound of that at all,” she said, frowning.

“Let me ask you this: If tracks were made by a large animal in the snow, and then there was more snow, and then a crust of sleet froze over all of that, could someone still excavate those tracks?”

She stared at him for a moment. “I couldn’t, but we have a ranger on staff who maybe could.”

An hour later, they were back at Cam’s cabin. A long, tall, gaunt ranger who looked uncannily like Abraham Lincoln was down on hands and knees on Cam’s front porch, scraping gently at the snow with a woodworker’s two-handled draw knife. Cam and Mary Ellen, trying to ignore the cold, watched from the doorway.

“Normally,” the ranger said, “the prints would simply fill up, but you said you saw an ice film. That’s what I’m looking for. How deep would you say the snow was when the prints were made?”

“A dusting of blown snow,” Cam said. “Maybe half an inch deep, max.” Everyone’s breath was making puffs of condensation in the frigid air, and now the ranger shifted to a paintbrush as he continued to mine his way down through the snow along a three-foot-long stretch outside of the area where Cam and the dogs had trampled the snow. Two pairs of German shepherd ears were silhouetted in one of the front windows.

“Well, this may all be for nothing if that layer of ice-wait one. Here we go. Here we go.”

The ranger shifted from the big paintbrush to a much smaller and finer brush and began to remove snow across the line of his original shallow trench. As he did so, the outline of a paw print began to emerge.

Mary Ellen looked over his shoulder and whistled quietly. “That’s a big bastard,” she said.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” the ranger replied, clearing away the remaining snow almost grain by grain until he had the entire print revealed. Then he brought out a spray can from his field kit and sprayed the entire depression. “It’s a silicone-based compound,” he said. “Solidifies on cold contact.” The material was barely tinted yellow, but it held enough color that the print was thrown into clear relief. This time, Cam could see the tops of claw marks, and it wasn’t a happy sight. The ranger sat back on his haunches. “Now that,” he declared, “is a large cat. Panther, from the size of it.” He laid down another coat of varnish, waited a moment, and did it again.

“And not declawed,” Mary Ellen commented.

“Yeah,” the ranger said, getting a camera out of his pack. He fired off several pictures from different angles, then swore, fished out a ruler, laid it down by the track, and did it all again. The print looked to Cam to be about ten inches across.

“Are there more?” the ranger asked.

“There was a line all the way across this porch,” Cam said. “The dogs came in here by the door and messed stuff up, which is why I had you start in the middle of the porch. There’s more on that porch over there.”

The ranger nodded and began to extend his trench in the snow. “I need one, preferably two more to get an estimate of stride length. This’ll take awhile.”

The dogs were getting antsy inside the cabin, so Cam went back in, and Mary Ellen followed. She greeted both dogs affectionately and they returned her favor.

“Great shepherds,” she said. “Let me guess: This one’s business and this one’s pleasure?”

“Right you are,” Cam said. “Although the black one can do business if he has to. Mostly, he just scares people by looking at them.”

“Works for me,” she said. “How’d they react to that thing being out there on the front porch?”

“Not bravely,” he replied.

“Smart dogs,” she said, shaking off her coat now she was inside the warm cabin. She had a field belt on under her bulky Park Service coat, complete with what looked like a Glock. She saw him looking. “I don’t leave home or the office without it,” she said. “Ever since…”